


Five Plus One Airmen Luvander Falls In Love With At Christmas

by moonix



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Christmas, Festive Bastion Gift Exchange, Five Plus One, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 13:51:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2734922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luvander has a habit of falling in love over Christmas. Pity it usually ends in heartbreak. For the prompt "Festive Luvander, any way you want him. Other Airmen welcome. Bonus points for seasonal singing."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Plus One Airmen Luvander Falls In Love With At Christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missbysshe (luvanderwon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvanderwon/gifts).



> Spoilers: All books including Steelhands
> 
> Trigger warnings: Brief mentions of domestic violence, but it's off-screen.
> 
> I took some liberties here and just assumed that Christmas was actually a thing in Volstov. Sorry for the (post-Havemercy-appropriate) sadness, I couldn't get around it. (Ok so I lied, there are character deaths, but they're all off-screen and canon?) I did try to make this somewhat tie into Janie's wonderful story The Trouble With Ghosts, which you can find here http://archiveofourown.org/works/2439362 . You don't need to have read it to understand this (but I highly recommend doing so anyway!). In any case, I like to pretend that they all come back in the end...
> 
> Merry Christmas, Janie - I had a bit of an advantage here in that I already knew exactly what you would like, either way I hope I've done it justice, because you're my best one, never forget that xxx

**Five Airmen Luvander Falls In Love With At Christmas**

**(+ One He Gets To Keep)**

_One._

It all begins, as these things tend to do, with Raphael.

A month ago, Luvander stood trembling in the first snow of Yesfir's curious gaze, determined not to lose this game, and nearly wet his pants when she snapped playfully at his scarf and laughed, a sound like a sooty black thumbprint on clean linen. She chose him, the third and last swift of the lot, and Luvander wept with gratitude as he packed up his meagre belongings that night and kissed his favourite sister goodbye, though if anyone were to mention this to any of the other airmen, Luvander wouldn't hesitate to split his knuckles on their teeth.

Luvander knows what they say about men who ride swifts. Being called _delicate_ is the least of his problems: Luvander wears his delicate with pride, _heart on your sleeve and eyes on the sky_ his grandma used to say, and in the end, that got him as far as a dragon's back, didn't it? So he owns his shortcomings, like he always has, and after climbing into Rook's lap with a smirk and a “is that a candy cane in your pants, Airman Rook, or are you just happy to see me?” even Rook's keeping a lid on the jokes lately. Maybe Luvander doesn't have to punch anyone just yet.

He earns his place among the airmen by always being bolder and sassier than the rest, and when he wakes up on Christmas morning and his face isn't blue for the first time in a long while, Luvander feels he deserves a celebratory breakfast with brioches from town and one of those hot chocolates they sell around the 'Versity.

It's still early in the morning, chewy candyfloss snow squeaking under his boots as he makes his way back to the Airman, the paper bag of fresh raisin-studded brioches still warm under his arm. He hums Christmas carols under his breath, salutes the guards in greeting, because they get a real kick out of being saluted by an airman, and steps inside the fluffy fried-egg warmth of the kitchen to make himself a coffee and eat all of his brioches very, very slowly while everyone else begs for scraps.

He's going to save the last one for Yesfir, who doesn't eat people food, but likes it when he brings her things anyway.

Only then there's Raphael, sitting at the kitchen table with hair like last year's tinsel and that forlorn, biscuit crumb look in his eyes that are still puffy from sleep, a crinkled, friendly “morning” between the sweet almonds of his lips, and Luvander can't help himself for a moment and offers to share the loot.

“Why?” Raphael asks, immediately suspicious, and Luvander turns a chair around and straddles it, shrugging.

“Because it's Christmas and I'm feeling generous,” he says, and bites into a brioche. “Last chance, fairy boy.”

“Fair enough,” Raphael mutters, snatching another brioche out of the bag that Luvander is waving slowly in front of his face.

The problem with Raphael isn't just that he's handsome, with his broad beautiful shoulders and his fairy light smile and his, fuck, his big hands that hold books like they're lovers. If Luvander fell in love with every good-looking chap that crosses his way, he'd be too busy swooning all over the place at the Airman to even sign up for raids. Okay, so he gossips about the others with Yesfir – whatever – the real problem with Raphael is that he's an absolute sweetheart by his very nature, and not even dragon fire could burn that out of him.

Raphael falls asleep with a book open on his face, pads around the Airman barefoot and wild-haired and quotes obscure poetry whenever anyone asks him a question. He always manages to somehow drop his spoon at dinner, says “dear me” in that completely baffled voice and giggles at himself. He gets late night chocolate cravings, holds doors open for whores the same as diplomats' wives, gets weepy when he's drunk and winks at Luvander when they run across each other in a bar down in Charlotte, as if that's a secret, as if they're both doing something illicit that the other boys aren't supposed to know about.

All of this slams into Luvander as he watches Raphael squint blearily into his coffee and nibble at his brioche on Christmas morning, surrounded by a farrago of drooping, ill-assorted decorations, the least offensive of which is a bough of mistletoe spray-painted gold and strung up smack above the kitchen table.

“Jeannot's doing, I believe,” Raphael says, one corner of his mouth curling up like a tea leaf. It makes Luvander's stomach do a curious thing.

“Good thing Jeannot isn't awake, then,” Luvander says blithely, licking the last crumbs off his fingers. “Who knows what he'd make us do, seeing as we're both underneath it.”

He leans across the table on his elbows, letting his tongue peek out thoughtfully between his lips, and looks Raphael up and down. To his disappointment, Raphael doesn't blush. Yet.

“Well, usually mistletoe means you have to kiss,” Raphael murmurs huskily.

“Yes, but don't forget that this is Jeannot we're talking about,” Luvander reminds him, still sprawled across the table. Jeannot has a price for everything, be it advice, a favour, or simply asking him to make you a cup of tea while he's in the kitchen, and he drives a hard bargain. If he's put up mistletoe above the kitchen table, then letting yourself get caught under it must cost you _something_ , though it's probably not what's going through Luvander's head right now, which has rather a lot to do with tying Raphael up in red and gold ribbon and seeing how long he'll last before he forgets the lines of his favourite poems.

“Be a shame if he were to walk in on us now,” Raphael says, clearly implying the opposite, and Luvander has to bite down hard on his tongue to keep himself from suggesting they go somewhere more private instead.

“Yeah, we wouldn't have a choice but to do what he says, lest he tell the others,” Luvander whispers. He can feel their little charade coming to an end, like wrapping paper running out before you've even started wrapping the really good presents, but has to tear his eyes away from Raphael when Amery comes barging in with the biggest Christmas tree Luvander has ever seen and promptly gets stuck in the door.

Raphael helps him, laughing, and for the rest of the day, he and Luvander play business as usual. Jeannot's mistletoe gets largely interpreted as permission to punch whoever happens to sit at the kitchen table, and if Luvander sits a little too close to Raphael in the common room that night, no one notices, because they're too busy making up rude versions of Christmas carols for their dragons and throwing darts at the ball ornaments on Amery's tree.

Ivory gets recruited the year after, making Raphael emotionally unavailable for all eternity to anyone else, but before that happens, Raphael and Luvander get to spend exactly one night together. Raphael fucks him on New Year's Eve, twice, and Luvander doesn't tell him that he's never let anyone do that to him before, but it doesn't matter, because Raphael is careful and kind anyway. After, there are days when Luvander still feels him inside him, when a book from the library seems to carry the clean, warm ginger and clove scent of Raphael's skin, or when his coarse fir needle laugh pricks at a hidden place in Luvander's heart, but Luvander is used to that. In the end, he always falls for his closest friends, it's sort of his burden, is what he tells Yesfir, anyway. Yesfir snorts smoke rings that melt clean through the frozen air in the pens and tosses her head.

“Patience,” she says, “you'll meet your soul mate yet.”

She's not wrong.

* * *

 _Two_.

One year later, Luvander is feeling drained and worn thin from one too many winter raids, his grandmother has just died, and Raphael is heartsick and miserable no matter how many times Luvander dumps glitter in his hair or makes him his most potent chilli powder hot chocolate. There's a pun in there somewhere about heartburn and heartache, but Luvander can't bring himself to make actual words today, and instead lists sideways until he lands in Magoughin's lap.

“Alright?” Magoughin says, grinning down at him. He's wearing a hideous, hand-knitted moose sweater, and he smells like cardamom, burnt sugar and ground coffee. Luvander inhales deeply.

“Peachy,” he says, and puts his legs in Raphael's lap, nudging his chin with his foot so he'll stop staring at Ivory over by the piano. Ivory is playing a rather aggressive _Carol Of The Bells_ , oblivious to his surroundings, and Raphael needs to stop looking like it sets his insides afloat like sheets of ice and drink his fucking hot chocolate that Luvander's prepared so lovingly for him.

Raphael just sighs and goes back to gazing forlornly at his book.

“Ugh,” Luvander says, defeated.

Magoughin laughs quietly and reaches over to brush a trail of glitter loose from Raphael's hair. Luvander isn't quite quick enough to avoid him wiping his glittery fingers on Luvander's elbow, but doesn't have the energy to get up and shake it off, either, so he leaves it there, a shiny silver elbow patch where the wool of his grey jumper is threadbare and fuzzy from wear.

“Bastion damn it, not again,” Ace snarls from the other sofa when Ivory starts in on his fourth rendition of _Carol Of The Bells_. “Don't you know any other Christmas songs?”

Ivory ignores him and keeps playing.

Raphael sighs.

“I need a cup of tea,” Luvander announces to no one in particular.

“You need something stronger than that,” Magoughin mutters, eyes sparkling gold like drops of molten butter, and slides out from under his head. Luvander sags against the sofa cushions, feeling sorry for himself for a little while, then he swings his legs off Raphael and follows Magoughin into the kitchen.

“What's that?”

Magoughin is standing over a pot, stirring a cloud of cinnamon into swirling milky liquid. He smiles as Luvander gets on tip-toes and peeks over his shoulder.

“This,” he says, “is Christmas cheer in a mug, and also a family secret, so I'm afraid you'll just have to blind test it.”

“Mmm,” Luvander purrs, digging his chin into Magoughin's firm neck. “I'm rather good at that.”

He closes his eyes as Magoughin chuckles and scoops up a spoonful of sweet-smelling Christmas cheer for Luvander to try. It trickles hot over his tongue, tasting like marzipan, roasted almonds and sharp sizzling cinnamon, and something bitter-sweet that burns in the back of his throat like he's inhaled a lungful of glitter. He coughs, then laughs.

“Fuck me, that is good,” Luvander chokes out, voice like peppermint brittle.

“It is, but no thank you,” Magoughin replies on the curved end of a smirk.

“Shame,” Luvander sighs, reaching for the shelf of mugs above the sink, and doesn't talk about the disappointment twisting like liquorice and black pepper in his guts until he's down in Yesfir's bay later that night, hands wrapped around another mug of Magoughin's miracle cure ( _whatever_ it is), the cinnamon making his mouth tingle and his tongue loose.

“Patience, love,” Yesfir rumbles soothingly and curls her tail around his nest of blankets and scarves for extra protection. “Next year perhaps.”

“Mm, next year,” Luvander agrees, burrowing deeper into his blankets. “Perhaps.”

* * *

 _Three_.

Next year is a bit of a surprise, to be honest.

Luvander's never paid much attention to Merritt beyond joining in the general chorus of laughter and ribbing when he upends his bowl of porridge in Evariste's lap at breakfast or knocks down Adamo's favourite whiskey tumbler by accident. Merritt is scrawny, freckly and clumsy, he never quite manages to scrub the soot out from between his fingers after a raid, and he gets quiet and withdrawn when he's drunk, blotted out almost completely by the others' big boisterous inebriation – Rook, jumping down people's throats at the merest provocation; Ghislain and his rum-infused pirate shanties; Ace's reckless determination to get himself killed in the most creative way he can think of; the weepy disaster that is Raphael after too much mulled wine. Merritt is only noticeable when he's irritating, or when he's up in the air.

All of the airmen are essentially transformed flying their dragons, but Merritt and Vachir become something else entirely. Where Merritt is fidgety and nervous on the ground, his aim is razor-sharp and precise in the air, hands on Vachir's reins steady as a surgeon's, and in the moments after they dismount at the end of a raid, Vachir's fire seems to burn on in him, a strong, calm flame searing away all the frayed edges and threadbare patches of self-doubt.

This year, the airmen who aren't signed up for raids are allowed to go home for Christmas, provided they have a home to go to. Luvander stays behind, arranging to meet his favourite sister for coffee in town one afternoon, to give her the charming little hat he picked out in one of the shops along the Rue for her. He spends a quiet couple of days at the Airman, talks newest trends in headdress fashion with Yesfir, tries and fails to make friends with Ivory, and makes rosemary crowns for Jeannot, Amery and Compagnon – well, he makes one for all the remaining airmen, but most of them get tossed into the fireplace by Rook before he's even finished.

On the day before New Year's Eve, Luvander has just come back from telling Yesfir how nice it is to be free of the burdens of love this year, when he finds Merritt slouched over his boots in the hallway. He's got his hood up, but in the second it takes him to turn away and tug the laces free with a trembling hand, Luvander can see that there's a big, shiny bruise covering almost the whole right side of his face.

“Shit,” Luvander says, stopping in his tracks. “What happened to you? I thought you were with your family?”

“I was,” Merritt mutters dully. He straightens up, grabs his bag from the floor and pulls his hood down further over his face. It doesn't hide the split lip, shocking poinsettia red, flecks of blood clinging to the corner of his mouth like peeling varnish. “Didn't want to miss Rook's annual Christmas tree burning on New Year's.”

He tries to push past Luvander, who manages to catch him around the chest with one arm. Merritt makes a noise that sounds like Ghislain stepping on a bell.

“No offence, but you look like Amery beat you up,” Luvander says. “You didn't insult his brother, did you?”

Merritt snorts and pries Luvander's arm off with hands that are surprisingly strong, considering they're still visibly shaking. He's not usually the type to get into bar fights, though Luvander's seen him throw the occasional punch when airman honour commanded it, and there was that one time Evariste tried to tie his hands together to make him stop fidgeting – Luvander's pretty sure Ev's still got that scar.

“Come on,” Luvander says, grabbing Merritt by the lapels and hauling him along to the kitchen. “Everyone else is out.”

“Will you fucking let go of me,” Merritt grumbles, but follows him anyway.

In the kitchen, Merritt sits at the table with his hood still drawn and his leg bouncing almost painfully hard, while Luvander heats up some apple cider and toasts half a loaf of bread. He serves it with salted butter and thick slices of ham, and they eat in raw, gristly silence, knives screeching against plates like vengeful spirits.

Merritt coughs, and it sounds like it hurts.

“Bruised ribs?” Luvander guesses. Merritt glowers from underneath his hood. With a sigh, Luvander gets up from where he's straddling his chair, unlatches the window and scoops some fresh snow from the window sill outside onto a dishcloth. He adds what's left of the rosemary and some other herbs he finds, stacked haphazardly on the shelf that's supposed to hold biscuits.

“Here, for your face,” he says, handing the whole thing over.

“Why are you doing this?” Merritt asks hoarsely and squints at Luvander before pressing the cloth gingerly to the side of his face. It's a fair question, as airmen aren't usually very concerned about each other's well-being, unless the medics are off duty and someone needs stitches, which Ivory and Jeannot are both creepily good at providing, or in the special case of hangovers, where everyone makes it their business to be as loud and disruptive as possible in order to maximise their comrade's suffering.

“You're wearing your uniform,” Luvander points out. “No one gets attacked in the street wearing that uniform, not in the middle of the day, not at Christmas, not when we're about to win them the war. You don't pick fights like Rook and Ace, and you just came back early from home with half your face in shades of lilac. There's a reason I signed up for the Christmas raids, I imagine it's much the same as why you're back ahead of time.”

Merritt's head snaps up, and the fingers that are drumming cloudburst rhythms into the tabletop falter for a moment.

“Fuck,” he mutters, face twisting up in darker purples. “My father... I hate this fucking – I'm an _airman_ now, for fuck's sake, and I _still_ let him beat me up.”

Luvander smiles, dry and bitter like wormwood.

“We're children again soon as we cross our parents' thresholds,” he elaborates for him, and Merritt adjusts the drippy cloth against his cheek and squeezes his eyes shut. Something tender takes root in Luvander's heart then, a tenacious, hardy weed of caring, and he wants to reach out and brush the hood from Merritt's head, reveal that bright red shock of hair and the spiky holly of his eyes.

“If only I could take Vach,” Merritt mumbles, mouth pulled taut with misery.

Luvander tops up their mugs with the last of the smoking spiced cider, packs another dishcloth with fresh snow and herbs for Merritt and rummages around the cupboards for some of Magoughin's miracle painkillers. After, he sends Merritt to bed - “Don't tell Ev, please?” Merritt mutters, coughing again, because Evariste is his best friend, but he doesn't understand about growing up in squalor, and fathers that aren't proud of their sons. Luvander gives him a scratchy raffia smile and shoos him out, cleaning up the kitchen in the dripping quiet left behind, until Rook and the others come back in trailing cold air and gossip from town.

Over the next days, Luvander's lungs bloom with a fierce protectiveness every time he sees Merritt. He's not in _love_ , not really; Yesfir can bare her teeth and twitch her tail all she likes when he tells her that. It's more like what he felt when his favourite sister Rosie had her heart broken by a boy for the first time, with the difference that, okay, maybe _sometimes_ he'd also like to peel Merritt out of his never-ending layers of jumpers and socks, lay him out on his bed and take care of him in ways he wouldn't know from his scarce visits to Our Lady, draw out that gingery burn of dragon fire and self-assurance that sets him aglow after a raid and bite different types of bruises into his skin until he forgets the old ones.

But Merritt jumps whenever Luvander sits too close or touches his elbow without warning, and so he leaves him alone, and pretends it's an accident when he steps on Amery's toes for going too far in his teasing. Soon, Merritt's bruises fade like ghosts of the old year, and Luvander sits with Yesfir in the coarse, biting rust of January cold, nursing a light fever but refusing to ask Adamo for time off, talking about Merritt's hair until it's all out of his system.

The weedy growth of a soft spot somewhere in his solar plexus doesn't quite rot, even when he's long stopped fantasizing about playing nurse, but that's alright, Yesfir says.

“Caring makes you strong,” she claims, stubbornly, as Luvander cries into her warm scales. “It gives you something to fight for.”

She nudges his hip with her snout, and he gives a gaspy, wibbly laugh through the tears.

“What if no one cares about me, though?” he asks, tears trickling down his face. “Does that make me weaker?”

“Oh, blow your filthy fucking nose, you silly goose,” Yesfir growls. “Or I'll make you polish your own snot off me until your hands bleed.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Luvander whispers, wiping his sleeve over her spotless flank.

“Patience, Luv,” Yesfir tells him again when he leaves that night. The nickname sends a prickle of unseasonally late joy down Luvander's spine, and he strings a smile up across his face for her in response.

“I know,” he says. “Patience.”

* * *

 _Four_.

Amery goes missing before Luvander has finished falling in love with him.

_Missing in action_ , is what Adamo's official report says - Luvander knows, because he sneaked into his office to read it - and for a few months, Luvander shouts everyone down who says otherwise, convinced that any moment now, Amery will blow into the common room with his coarse autumn leaf laugh and his impeccable uniform and lead them all in a rousing chorus of Volstov's national anthem, the rude version of course, the one he and Niall and Rook came up with last spring. Over steaming mugs of spiced rum, he'll tell them about his adventures in the Ke'Han mountains, how he fought his way back and still managed to make his hair look as sleek and shiny and perfect as ever, and Luvander will reach over and muss it up like he always does when Amery goes on about his precious coiffure.

But then it's December again, and Amery's record still says those three bastion-damned words, _missing in action_ , and even though no one's stupid enough to mention it in front of Rook and Luvander, the implication hangs over them like the smell of burnt food and unwashed socks in the corridors.

Anastasia has stopped talking.

There's nothing wrong with her mechanics. They say it's because she doesn't have a rider; that she doesn't _need_ to talk, because she's not participating in the raids anymore, but even Luvander, whose grief spills out in thick eggnog slugs of unstoppable, inane chatter, can see that sometimes, grief is spelled in silent fonts instead. He goes to visit her a few times, wreaths her neck in garlands of dark bitter ivy and jewel-bright rose-hips and sings Amery's favourite songs under his breath, and while she still doesn't make a sound, she does seem a little less agitated each time he leaves.

Adamo gathers them all in the common room a few nights before Christmas Eve.

The airmen have stopped talking about Amery a long while ago, but the fact that no one's put up any decorations yet is like a punch in the guts when Luvander walks in. He's been avoiding the common room lately, but now he thinks that maybe he needs to take matters into his own hands, because no way is Amery going to come back if this place looks more depressing than a burnt-out house on the Mollyedge, for fuck's sake.

“We're getting a new recruit at the start of the year,” Adamo announces then, and Luvander's world crumbles like a poorly constructed gingerbread house.

“No,” he says, a red-hot slap of sound that sets the silence reverberating like metal pipes. “You can't. She has to choose first, that can take months, if not years. You can't just strap some fledgling would-be airman to her back and hope for the best.”

“Anastasia's already made her pick,” Adamo says, weary and merciless. “Apparently she met Amery's brother when Amery gave him an ill-advised tour of the pens a few months ago.”

Luvander makes a choked sound between outrage and dull humour. They're allowed to have assorted visitors at the Airman, of course, but they're really not supposed to let them anywhere near the dragons, not even family. It figures that Amery would ignore this particular rule, especially for the benefit of his beloved baby brother, whom none of them have ever had the pleasure to meet despite regular requests. “He's too delicate for you rowdy bunch,” Amery used to say.

And now Nasta's gone and chosen him.

Luvander doesn't know if he wants to laugh, or scream, or break something. He doesn't do any of these things, because hysteria clashes terribly with his complexion – _oh Yesfir, if you were here to see me now_ , he thinks, digging his fingers hard into the sofa cushions, until everyone's trooped down to the mess hall for dinner, and only Ghislain is left in the room with him.

“Luvander,” he says, sounding like it's coming from far away. “You can't bring him back, you know.”

The sofa dips as he sits down next to Luvander, who feels limp and winded. Ghislain's words are like the stinging heat of the fireplaces after coming back in from the cold, like the first painful flare of sensation in fingers frozen stiff in their gloves. Ghislain's right, of course. Luvander can't bring him back, no amount of wishing and playing pretend can, not if he decorates the common room with all the bells and whistles of Thremedon and not even if he gets Anastasia to talk again.

“Yes, well,” Luvander says, sober now. “If wishes were fishes.”

Then he leans his head against Ghislain's shoulder and cries.

It's the messy kind of crying, complete with snot and bile and hideous sounds, and it takes him half an hour to calm down again once he's started, but Ghislain doesn't push him off, just sits there with his shoulders and his big hands and his oceanic tranquillity and waits for the tide of Luvander's sorrow to recede.

When he's done, Ghislain looks at him sideways and raises one eyebrow. Luvander wipes the brine of his tears off his face with his sleeve, then tries to do the same to Ghislain's soaked shoulder, and suddenly they're both laughing, silently shaking with mirth at this bizarre scene that's taken shape around them without their consent like a Ke'Han wind, until Luvander's stomach is cramping and there are fresh tears running down his cheeks, though for a different reason.

“Fuck,” he wheezes, Ghislain's sleeve caught in his fingers.

“Fuck indeed,” Ghislain chuckles.

Luvander rubs his abused stomach muscles and slumps back against the sofa cushions with a sigh.

“I'm hungry, but I don't think I can eat anything right now.”

“Hmm,” Ghislain says. He plunges his hand into the gap between the backrest and the seat of the couch and comes up with an unopened bottle of thick, dark Ke'Han wine. “How about a drink, then?”

“That I can get behind,” Luvander says, impressed by the ingeniously simple hiding place, and takes the bottle by its sturdy neck to work the cork loose with his teeth. It's a bad habit he's picked up from Jeannot, who makes it look sinfully attractive, though Luvander rather suspects it has more to do with Jeannot's outrageously beautiful mouth than the act itself. Shame. He'd like to look sinfully attractive for once.

He takes a long swig and hands the bottle back to Ghislain, who drains half in one go and lets Luvander have the rest in small, dainty sips. It still goes to his head.

They both miss dinner that night, but if there's any talk about that among their fellow airmen, one calm, mountainous gaze from Ghislain puts those gossipy fires out faster than a bucket of ice water. Luvander raids his secret stash of crumpets later and staggers his way down to Yesfir's bay with an armful of ribbons and lanterns, dumping it all at her feet with a mighty crash and laboriously sitting himself down next to it.

“I'm decorating Nasta's bay, help me pick?” he slurs, and Yesfir tugs a squashed golden bow out from underneath the pile with her teeth and drapes it over Luvander's ear.

“Common room's next,” Luvander says. “Turns out we had a bunch of very indecent ornaments stashed in the attic. I bet they're Compagnon's. I brought you a penis-shaped one, look.”

Yesfir growls approvingly and ducks her head so Luvander can affix it to one of her scales. A burst of warmth trails from her mouth, and Luvander shivers and tucks himself closer.

“I'm gonna put one on Ivory's piano later,” Luvander giggles to himself. “Keeping the bum ornaments to myself, though, before Niall gets his filthy hands on them.”

“You reek of Ke'Han wine,” Yesfir says.

“Yeah, Ghislain got me drunk in Amery's honour,” Luvander explains. Yesfir chortles, sooty syllables of delight clanking like metal on metal somewhere inside her ribcage.

“I think he'd appreciate it, if he were here,” Luvander hiccups sadly. “All of it, yeah? The getting drunk, the penis ornaments, the – the crumpets, his girl being passed on to his brother, and me falling in love with his best friend – Ghislain, I mean – but especially the getting drunk part. Not the crying, though. That was unsavoury.”

“I'll imagine,” Yesfir sighs. “Compassus's boy, eh?”

Luvander nods wistfully, thinking of Ghislain's broad gingerbread hands and his bold cocoa powder laugh and the scar across his left eyebrow. There are worse people to fall in love with than Ghislain, far, far worse; but Luvander is going to do exactly jack shit about it, because Amery would have an aneurysm laughing about it if he knew, and Ghislain isn't the type of person you want to mess with, anyway.

“Could be worse,” Yesfir says, echoing his thoughts.

“Yeah,” Luvander says, “could be Rook.”

“Or the Chief,” Yesfir chuckles, then picks out a shiny dark red ribbon and puts it in Luvander's lap. One of her teeth has singed a little hole into the fabric, but Luvander can drape it so it doesn't show.

“This one?”

“Mm. And a lantern, but somewhere she can't knock it down by accident,” Yesfir instructs.

“Hey, maybe I'll fall in love with Amery's precious little brother next year,” Luvander giggles as he twists the ribbon into an elaborate bow for Nasta's bay. “Might be good Amery's not around to witness that, I bet he'd have a fit.”

“That's the spirit,” Yesfir grins.

* * *

 _Five_.

As self-fulfilling prophecies go, this one's child play. As predicted under the influence of Ke'Han wine, Luvander falls in love with Amery's brother the next year, hard, and it takes him longer to shake off than all the ghosts of his previous heartbreaks put together.

A lot of things happen that year. Balfour's initiation into the Dragon Corps is drawn-out and messy and keeps them occupied all throughout the winter months and half of spring. Niall and Luvander start competing about everything – whores and alcohol, being the first to sink their teeth into a juicy bite of gossip, illicit dragon races (they're not supposed to, but they do it anyway, diving and looping and screaming on the way back from a raid, like quills scribbling away indecent words in the blotting paper night sky). Bets about everything, from the colour of Jeannot's socks that day to number of kills made by Rook on the next raid. Luvander silently gloats for two weeks when he's the first to witness Ivory sneaking into Raphael's room in the dead of night, but that's not actually something anyone talks about, or has ever talked about, so he keeps his mouth shut and resorts to smirking at Niall across the dinner table any opportunity he gets instead. There's a visit from th'Esar, a masked ball at the end of summer where people dance amid the gloopy perfumed handprints of overripe rosebushes and the powdery beckoning fingers of rustling lace, and in autumn all the dragons need maintenance, because the nights are growling with thunderstorms this year and Thoushalt catches the tail end of a lightning strike, which unearths a weak spot in the dragons' insulated hides and makes Ace's hair stick up for weeks after.

Luvander and Balfour never fly at the same time, because they both ride swifts, but Luvander runs into him often enough. Like Luvander with Yesfir, Balfour has taken to paying Anastasia the occasional daytime visit, and Luvander is delighted to once again hear the clear trickle of steel that is Anastasia's voice coming from her pen one day.

They see each other in the kitchen, when Balfour is fixing himself breakfast in his pyjamas, rubbing one bare, sooty foot against the other while whorls of steam rise from his tea and cup his delicate jaw, and Luvander is just getting in from a night out with Niall, Ghislain, Raphael and Magoughin. They never ask Balfour if he wants to join them, even though he's of age now, but then Balfour has never expressed any particular interest. He seems content to remain behind with Ivory, the only other person to get away with being an antisocial bastard, on account of his skill with knives and the expression in his eyes when you get too close, which is like the sky seizing up in black and purple just before a particularly violent storm.

The first snow of the year comes early, on Luvander's 30th birthday, which is only a day after Amery's would have been. Balfour keeps up a brave front throughout both days. There's a pub crawl in Luvander's honour, and he invites Balfour on a whim, because he's already tipsy and Balfour is looking all fancy and grown-up in this stupid waistcoat he's got on that day, and Luvander's going to be haunted by the smoke-ring spectre of Amery whether Balfour's there or not, so he might as well come with them and get stinking drunk just to please him.

“Who knows, maybe it'll loosen the stick in his ass some,” Niall smirks, uncharitably, and Balfour tugs at his gloves and says nothing.

Luvander is paying that night, which is why he's counting drinks in the first place – he's good at that sort of thing, keeping tabs on insignificant details, making mental notes of the seemingly irrelevant until it suddenly becomes relevant. He's the only one to notice, apart from maybe Ivory, who was convinced in some as yet unspecified way by Raphael to join them, that Balfour actually out-drinks both Rook and Ace, and the Chief when he shows up later. Even more astoundingly, he does all this without boasting or showing visible signs of inebriation until the very end, when he's approaching Ghislain's hitherto unbeaten though comfortably held record alcohol intake in that particular bar.

Suitably impressed, Luvander tries to rely this mind-boggling fact to Niall, who chooses that moment to swing an arm around him and press a very obvious and very unexpected kiss to Luvander's mouth.

Luvander has just enough time to register that Niall's lips are peppermint cool and toffee soft, and that he smells like carnival bonfires and midnight escapades, before Niall pulls away to whoops and laughter and punches his fist in the air, shouting “Yes! I win!” while Luvander puzzles over which game they were playing.

It keeps snowing.

The last pumpkin leer of October light extinguishes itself in the cold cigarette smoke of November, which begins with Raphael happily limping around the common room with fresh secrets tucked away in the dog-eared corners of his mouth, and ends with Niall being put on dog rations for all of December after being caught in Adamo's office with two whores and a bottle of creamy Arlemagne champagne. Luvander refuses to high-five him for it, because Niall knows how much he likes that champagne and still didn't share, and Niall pouts and whines about this even more than he does about the dog rations, which is obviously very satisfying to Luvander, but doesn't make him relent about that high-five.

Then Balfour decorates the common room.

He does it at night, when everyone is out on either a Ke'Han raid or a bar raid, or has locked themselves away in their rooms for whatever secret, limp-inducing activities go on there. Luvander got left behind by Niall, the filthy traitor, when his planned twenty minute cat nap persisted all throughout dinner, which Niall apparently took the liberty of eating for him before he left, and so, shortly after midnight, Luvander is wide awake, hungry and irritated, and only trips over the golden syrup light spilling out of the common room when he's already on his way back to his bedroom from the kitchen.

Curious, he peeks around the half-open door and has to catch his breath.

“In retrospect,” Luvander will tell Yesfir later, “this was so obviously one of those classic, pseudo-magical love at first sight moments, I really should have seen it coming.”

He doesn't see it coming. What he sees is the tree, even taller than the ones Amery always lugged up to the Airman on his ridiculous wooden sleigh, covered from trunk to tip in tiny, dripping lights and big, floaty, dark red Christmas baubles. There's a merry fire blazing in the fireplace, and Balfour is sitting on the floor in front of an open box, up to his elbows in its glittery ornamental contents and his hair pulled out of his face with a dainty silver ribbon. That ribbon sends little thrills dancing up and down Luvander's spine, like light reflecting off water.

“What are you doing?” Luvander asks, a plate of Jeannot's boozy mocha biscuits in one hand. Balfour starts so badly he drops one of the baubles, and it rolls lopsidedly over to Luvander, who stops it with the tip of his foot.

“Um,” Balfour says, and promptly flushes. He's so wee and adorable, and Luvander wants to do all kinds of untoward things to him right there on the rug. “Decorating the tree. Ghislain brought it up earlier and I found some stuff among Amy's old things...”

Warmth rolls through Luvander, and he picks up the errant bauble and walks over to sit on the floor with Balfour, putting the biscuits between them as a barrier and an offering. He rolls up his sleeves with a flourish.

“Okay,” he says, “let's do this.”

They finish decorating Amery's tree together, not talking much, and then Balfour makes them tea and they also finish eating all of Jeannot's biscuits. Thrumming with caffeine, Luvander shows Balfour how to fold a paper dragon out of old newspaper, and they have a little competition trying to make them sail straight into the fireplace, which Balfour wins entirely by accident.

“Winner gets to choose a reward,” Luvander announces, because those are the rules, and he's feeling generous again.

“I'd have said the last biscuit, but you already ate that one,” Balfour says wistfully. They're both sitting in front of the sofa now, leaning back against the cushions with their legs stretched out in front of them, a small treasure trove of gleaming, mischievous mugs dotted around the floor between them, boasting the soggy brushwood dregs of too-strong tea and pointless late-night conversations.

“How about a kiss, then,” Luvander suggests on half a hiccup, struggling to sit back upright.

“Hm,” Balfour hums, and: “I've never kissed anyone.”

Luvander's stomach clenches, white-knuckled and ginger sharp, and he flops onto his side and hooks his index finger around Balfour's chin to turn it around.

“Better not let Rook hear that,” he mutters, before leaning in.

It's the only kiss they ever share, but Luvander makes it count; flicking his tongue against Balfour's chapped lips until they crack apart like a sweet oyster to spill their soft, secret innards, licking the last sand grain tastes of black tea and brown sugar out from under his tongue and suckling his lower lip into his mouth until Balfour remembers to breathe again and a pearlescent moan rolls out alongside a tidal exhale.

They snap apart when the front door is kicked open by a pair of steel-toed airman boots that set the hallway ablaze with tinny echoes, and Luvander licks Balfour's taste and spit off his own lips and winks at him, starting to collect some of their mugs.

“Guess we're even,” he says on his way out the door, neatly side-stepping a loudly singing Ace in the corridor.

“Luvander!” Balfour calls, but Luvander has already ducked into the kitchen, where Rook and Niall are rummaging around for more booze, and Compagnon is sitting on one of the counters, giggling about an apple that has a funny shape.

He dumps the mugs in the sink, gives Niall's bum a resounding smack when he walks past, and says “I win” before slinking down another corridor that doesn't lead past the common room, but deep into the bowels of the Airman.

He needs to pay Yesfir a visit.

* * *

_Plus One._

Luvander doesn't fall in love with Niall until Niall is dead.

Except, of course, Niall isn't really dead; or rather, he comes _back_ from the dead, because Niall is a tenacious bugger, and he lost the very last game they played before the final battle – a simple wager on which airman would be the last to crawl out of bed that morning. Luvander won by putting his money on Raphael, who stumbled into the mess hall in the cool wake of a perfectly composed Ivory only five minutes later than Rook, to a whispered curse from Niall and the twitter of coins exchanging hands under the table.

Niall hates losing to Luvander.

“I couldn't just leave it at that, could I,” is one of the first things Niall says to him after he makes it back to Thremedon, spilling over Luvander's doorstep with his brandy butter voice and his mint chocolate chip eyes. It's already way into the new year, and Luvander has been eating soup for a month, because the last time he had any sort of appetite was when Raphael stood in his living room after a trip-up of autumn months filled with grief and phantom pains and tea going cold on the table beside him. So far, winter has kept him distracted and on his toes with worrying about Balfour and Adamo and corresponding with Ghislain and the emergence of the new dragons, so if Luvander's forgotten to decorate any part of his house for Christmas that isn't the front of his shop, no one's really noticed or commented. He's exhausted himself, lining his face with burnt and crinkly layers of fake Christmas cheer like reused parchment paper every single day throughout December, and now that his boys are all settled into a new routine at the Greylace estate and Raphael has got a place to live and Luvander is alone again, all he hungers for is peace and quiet.

When Niall wraps him up in a slow, squeezing hug, smelling like home, Luvander nearly buckles under the weight of a thousand old cravings unfurling back to life in his guts like a bundle of flowering tea at the bottom of a cup.

All of a sudden, his senses are alight with all the things he wants – tongue burning with the taste of cinnamon and ginger, lungs full to the brim with the smell of pinewood smoke and boot polish, an echo of dragon wings in his ears. He clings to Niall and remembers all the others that haven't come back, feels their touches on his skin like laughter in another room, digs his fingers into Niall's arms until he's sure it must hurt, because how _dare_ he.

How dare he be dead and then think he can fucking waltz back into Luvander's life like a belated Christmas present, wearing his continued existence like a fancy ribbon around his bastion-forsaken neck.

“I fucking hate you,” Luvander tells him, voice muffled in the collar of Niall's cloak. It's made of heavy brocade and black Ke'Han silk, and it smells like Niall, but a different version of him, one that Luvander doesn't know yet.

“As if,” Niall says, pressing a sloppy kiss to the side of his head. “You're practically weeping with joy because I'm back.”

“No, 's just your atrocious smell making my eyes water, you bastard.”

Luvander peels himself out of Niall's embrace and rubs at his treacherously wet cheeks, laughing, and then he pulls Niall upstairs to make them his strongest tea with cream and sugar – two for Niall, none for him – and to toast a shit-load of crumpets, because he's _ravenous_ , and Niall looks worn and tired and _skinny_ , and his knuckles are raw and chapped from the cold.

He closes the shop for a couple of days.

Despite his frantic worrying, his customers actually nod in approval over the sign, declaring loudly that it was high time he took a well-earned holiday, and Luvander blushes every time their voices trail up like smoke to the circular window stuck over his sink and Niall smirks from where he's sprawled out on the couch or across his table. During the day, they take walks around Thremedon together, to get Niall re-accustomed to the worn, scratchy fabric of home, and Luvander tells Niall what he can about things he's missed. They fall into an easy routine of joint housework, easy meals, and watching the bustle of the street downstairs, sitting on the windowsill, cocooned in blankets and cradling hot chocolates in their hands. At night, Niall spins tales of his adventures travelling with a troupe of Ke'Han performers for Luvander, painting colours into the chilly darkness with his long hands as they lie shoulder to shoulder in Luvander's small bed.

There's a niggling doubt in the back of Luvander's throat that he's hallucinating again, like when he came back injured from the battle and half-crazed with loss, but he squashes it like boots stamping out a camp fire and sends a note to Adamo as soon as he can figure out how to put Niall into words.

Adamo's reply is brief, informing him of the furious mob of airmen already on its way to descend upon Luvander's house and raid his kitchen, and, true to his word, Luvander opens the door an hour later to the snow-swept, glowing faces of Adamo, Raphael, Ghislain and Balfour, all of whom break out in whoops and cheers when Niall makes his dramatic entrance via the back of the shop.

Niall celebrates his return from the dead that night by getting utterly smashed with Ghislain, making increasingly inappropriate toasts to his fallen comrades, and kissing Raphael noisily on the mouth before crawling into Luvander's lap on all fours and falling sound asleep.

“Good to have you back, jerk,” Luvander grumbles, poking his side.

He re-opens the shop a week after, and Niall tries to make himself useful whenever he isn't out looking for a job or a place to live. He turns out to be a huge help, lifting boxes, running errands, keeping track of the newest fashions and nearly out-flirting Luvander himself when he takes over a customer every now and then. Every time Luvander wakes up to a red-rimmed advert in the apartment listings of the paper, his stomach droops like damp wool, but Niall always comes back from the viewing with a complaint and an apology for having to intrude on Luvander's hospitality a little longer, even when Luvander angrily waves him off.

The thing is, Luvander doesn't _want_ Niall to move out.

It's a small flat, yes, but he and Niall have always shared space; sitting squashed up against each other in the most comfortable armchair because neither was prepared to yield it to the other, wrestling over the last pudding at dinner, sleeping passed out drunk in the corridor with Luvander's head on Niall's stomach and Niall's arm wrapped around one of Luvander's legs. They've shared gossip and theories, food and showers, whores and wine; now, on top of these things, they're sharing a bed, and Niall wakes him up at night when Luvander has another nightmare and cups his hand over the base of his skull until his breathing's calmed down. It's not that different.

Not different at all, until they have sex for the first time. And the second. And the third.

On the morning of the fourth time it happens, Niall opens the shop for him, shutting him up with a kiss when Luvander protests and forcing a mug of freshly made coffee into his stiff, cold hands before he leaves. Luvander sits in bed, the covers and Niall's smell draped loosely around him, sips his coffee and eats his eggs on toast and aches for Yesfir's soothing advice.

Instead, he arranges to meet Raphael for banoffee pie on Sunday afternoon.

“So, me and Niall,” Luvander begins, stopping to catch his breath while he stirs his ridiculously sweet caramel hot white chocolate and looks out the window of the café. His silence fogs up the frosted window, painting ghosts that still haunt him.

“You've been sharing a bed for almost a month now, Luvander,” Raphael says gently. “I don't think anyone's really gonna be surprised.”

“Fuck,” Luvander sighs, dropping his head in his hands, cut-off gloves scraping against his hot cheeks.

“Obviously,” Raphael smirks, spearing a slice of banana with his fork and catching a drop of toffee sauce on his tongue before it lands on his soft, rumpled shirt. Luvander is surprised when he doesn't feel a tug of longing in his belly. What remains is a deep underground cave of concern, dripping stalactites of worry, because Raphael's got dark smudges under his eyes and his hands are shaking around his teacup and he looks like he hasn't combed his hair or paid attention to his clothes in a long time. His slice of banoffee pie is a mess of cream and crumbs on the plate, only the bananas picked out one by one.

“And you?” Luvander asks, delicately peeling each syllable away from the next. What he means is _you and Ivory_ , or rather _you without Ivory_ , but it might still be too fragile even for a whisper.

Raphael smiles sadly.

“No regrets,” he says, quiet and warm and rough, a little bird's nest of words tucked away in the rustling foliage of his voice. Something within Luvander unclenches, and he sags against the backrest of his chair.

“Okay, then,” he says, “I guess I'll enjoy it while it lasts, right? Before he dies for real, and I'm left behind again.”

“You're not alone, you know,” Raphael tells him, and Luvander wants to laugh, because it should be him telling Raphael that, not the other way around. Raphael has lost his long-time lover and soulmate and whatever else he and Ivory were to each other – Luvander isn't _blind_ , he could see that it wasn't just about sneaking into each other's bedrooms at night – and Luvander is being ungrateful, because for once in his life, someone actually came back to _him_.

“I'm sorry,” he sniffs, crossing his arms on the table and feeling hollow and ashamed. Raphael reaches around their plates and squeezes his wrist.

“Ain't nothing to be sorry for,” he says.

“Will you please eat your bastion-damned cake,” Luvander half-laughs, half-growls, and Raphael's smile turns impish, pressing a dimple into his cheek, like a finger pushing down a key on an old, well-loved piano, or a cookie cutter slicing into soft gingerbread dough.

“Old habit,” Raphael murmurs, barely audible. “I always left the cream for him.”

Luvander goes home that night with an ache in his bones and a drag in his muscles, but feeling like he can breathe again. Niall is out with Ghislain, scouting out a new bar and possibly covering their statues with rude graffiti, so Luvander pours himself a glass of wine, lights a few candles, and takes out his old box of Christmas decorations, filled with an amalgamation of everyone's favourites – Compagnon's indecent ornaments, Amery's big red baubles, Jeannot's gingerbread airmen, Ivory's paper dragons, Magoughin's bundles of spices and dried orange peel. One by one, he finds them all places of honour among his possessions, leaving a swirling trail of out-of-season but heartfelt, solemn festivity in his wake, until his whole flat smells like the Airman used to in Decembers past, and Niall comes home to find Luvander sitting cross-legged on the windowsill with a mug of milky chai and a battered golden bow draped over his ear.

“Um,” he says, slowly turning on the spot to take in the state of the flat. “Are we having Christmas early?”

“You missed it last year,” Luvander whispers, meaning: _me too_. “So we're making up for lost time.”

Niall nods, flicking his fingers against a tiny bell and setting it jingling.

“Sounds great,” he says and sits down next to Luvander on the windowsill.

“Can I kiss you?” Luvander asks. Niall grins, then looks down briefly and presses his lips together in a mock impression of seriousness, tugging on the golden bow hanging from Luvander's ear.

“Any time, Luv,” he murmurs, and Luvander lets himself fall forward into a lazy, languid kiss, because it's Christmas, and he's in love, and they've got all the time in the world.


End file.
